David Antrobus's Blog: The Migrant Type, page 34

The Three Rs - Rules of Riting Revisited

Illustration: Andrzej KrauzeSo, after flirting with anarchy in my last Indies Unlimited blog post, I'm now going to continue to obsess about rules, just like that lady who didth protest too much.

In my defence, rules are kind of fascinating, even when we disagree with them. I mean, how was it decided, for example, that in the English city of Chester, you can only shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow inside the city walls after midnight? Not even sure which part of that rule I disagree with most, especially since it's apparently okay to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow in York at any time of day or night. Except Sundays. (Oh, that's alright, then. And no, I promise I'm not making any of this up, you can check.)

But, back on track. My purposes here are to highlight a really cool link, in which the Guardian newspaper, following an excellent response by crime writer Elmore Leonard to a similar request, asked a bunch of accomplished writers to list up to ten "rules of writing" of their own. It really is an impressive list. Now, I could simply point you there and hope you go read them, but not only would this be a very short blog post, but the piece itself is very long, is in two parts, and honestly, even I am not that naive. So instead, I'll grab a fairly random handful of these rules, and hold them up for inspection. As well as mockery. Okay, not mockery; some sporadic light teasing, perhaps. All done in a spirit of affection, of course.

1. Elmore Leonard: "if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

Hey, Elmore, that sounds a bit like writing to me. What's that? Uh. Just kidding.

2. Margaret Atwood: "Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils."

I now have an unrequited urge to ask the redoubtable Margaret Atwood if she's heard of pencil sharpeners. Or mechanical pencils. Or, uh, iPads.

3. Geoff Dyer: "Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire."

Uh-huh. Nodding my head vigorously if slightly stupidly here. Okay, not a good look. Moving on.

4. Ann Enright: "The first 12 years are the worst."

Yes. And I would add—in flagrant violation of the entire principle of comparatives versus superlatives—that the next 12 years are also the worst. Face it, it never gets better. And I don't even think I'm kidding this time.

5. Ann Enright: "Only bad writers think that their work is really good."

I must like short and punchy, since Ms Enright gets two entries in a row here. And yes, I included this because we all feel hubris sometimes—until hubris grows suddenly weary of being felt and makes a break for it, leaving us alone with our far more familiar companion: crippling self-doubt. Screw you, hubris, we never loved you anyway. Sob.

6. Richard Ford: "Try to think of others' good luck as encouragement to yourself."

Good man! The spirit of Indies Unlimited right there. I also enjoy that he follows it up with "Don't take any s@#$ if you can ­possibly help it," which achieves a certain balance between gracious and curmudgeonly, one of the more difficult poses to maintain, I've found.

7. Esther Freud: "Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too."

Leave a little mystery, let your readers fill in the gaps. This feels like all-round good advice, like when the Brazilian government encouraged people to pee in the shower.

8. Neil Gaiman: "Write."

Well, thanks for that, Neil. Must have scratched your noggin a good while before coming up with that one. But wait, hold up, he's not done. He follows up later—like a drunk sportswriter mixing metaphors—with a slam dunk out of left field right in the top corner…

9. Neil Gaiman: "Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

I take from this: listen to the instincts of others—at first—but be wary if they then try to help you write the specific story they want to read, and not the story you want to read. Kind of like that initially harmless and even amusing drunk who then proceeds to follow you home from the bar. The one you turn to at some point, growl at in a low yet threatening voice to go write his own story and stop creeping yours. Sure, the metaphor died a little there, but what of it?

10. PD James: "Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell."

This. Thank you. More of us need to pass this on. And very much related is Hilary Mantel's "Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready." In other words, drop those sparkly-vampire boy-wizards now, you don't know where they've been.

11. Andrew Motion: "Think with your senses as well as your brain."

Again, succinct. But an invitation to live inside your story, to translate the sights, smells, sounds and textures into words. The real magic of writing. Maybe it takes a poet. And yes, that was an entirely sincere one.

12. Will Self: "You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished."

I sense some disturbing similarities between writing and sex here. We could investigate further. Or we could succumb to a probably fortuitous hybrid of wisdom and cowardice and move on…

13. Will Self: "The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can't deal with this you needn't apply."

14. Will Self: "Oh, and not forgetting the occasional beating administered by the sadistic guards of the imagination."

15. Zadie Smith: "Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied."

A basic density being my default mode, even I'm beginning to pick up from the last few examples that writing is probably not the ideal pursuit if your goal in life is, uh, to be happy. Damn. Hmmm. It really is too late, isn't it?

16. Sarah Waters: "Talent trumps all. If you're a ­really great writer, none of these rules need apply. If James Baldwin had felt the need to whip up the pace a bit, he could never have achieved the extended lyrical intensity of Giovanni's Room. Without "overwritten" prose, we would have none of the linguistic exuberance of a Dickens or an Angela Carter. If everyone was economical with their characters, there would be no Wolf Hall . . . For the rest of us, however, rules remain important. And, ­crucially, only by understanding what they're for and how they work can you begin to experiment with breaking them."

This comes closest to saying what I've been trying to express in my last two posts. It encapsulates that ambivalence with eloquence (ouch, after that particular ornate string of Latinate pretension, I will now be hounded for life by the finger-wagging ghost of William Strunk). But it does. And I would argue that the last clause, encouraging as it does the possibilities inherent in such experiments, may lead a few of us toward that greatness… or at the very least to soar awhile in that rarefied air. While waiting for the inevitable plummet earthwards, no doubt, toward a horribly gruesome crash that will nonetheless have been well earned.

And finally, if only because it's both funny and annoyingly smartass to point out a paradox, here's the ultimate (non) rule…

17. Michael Moorcock: "Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say."

(Seventeen? What kind of number is that? Who makes lists of seventeen? And yes, I did completely make up the word "didth" back there.)

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A version of this article first appeared on Indies Unlimited on February 17, 2012.

A Quiet Belief In Darkness

Okay, a couple of reviews I wrote this week for two better-than-decent books I recently read. Don't know why, but I love that opening sentence. Anyway, they're both on Amazon, but I'll reproduce them here.

First up, what is ostensibly a horror collection titled The Dark Is Light Enough For Me, by John Claude Smith:

In a market that is pretty much saturated with the tiredest of horror tropes (vampires, zombies, werewolves), along comes this refreshing debut collection by John Claude Smith. And when I say refreshing, I certainly don't mean "lightweight". The darkness itself, in fact, is very much a constant character in these stories of guilt, hubris, paranoia, abuse, vanity, addiction, desire and depravity.

Many of these stories, though modern, have Lovecraftian antecedents in mood and theme, and if I had to name a more contemporary writer with which to make comparisons, I'd have to say Thomas Ligotti—although, again, with a slightly more modern twist. I don't want to say "gothic" exactly, since that would unfairly typecast these unsettling tales, and they deserve a wider audience than that.

Smith's language is often baroque and inventive, occasionally straying into the ambitious realms in which a scrupulous editor is necessary (and perhaps lacking at times), but any risk of overreaching is admirably offset when compared to the largely anodyne nature of so many contemporary horror clichés. Smith manages to unearth and expose more layers of that deceptively simple term "horror" than most: here, existential dread arrives in unexpected places; disgust and dismay, too. Some of these stories are downright distressing, in fact.

Which is all a convoluted way of saying: buy this book, read it, and be prepared for some serious insomniac unease.

I said "ostensibly" back there as it manages to be something more than straight horror. Anyway, moving on to my second offering, RJ Ellory's A Quiet Belief In Angels.

At first glance, A Quiet Belief In Angels is a coming-of-age crime melodrama with an ameliorating echo of Steinbeck. But if we recall the familiar dictum that truth is stranger than fiction, we can appreciate that RJ Ellory's plot owes at least as much to his own backstory as it does to any lurid dimestore novel. It earns its occasional extravagances, in other words. And it does this in two ways. First, as mentioned, the author's own life has been punctuated by some remarkably similar losses and heartaches as those of his protagonist, Joseph Vaughn. And second, the gentle, lyrical tone of the novel manages to temper and even mask what might otherwise appear ludicrous.

In an interview with fellow author Richard Godwin, Ellory claims there are "two types of novels […] those that you read simply because some mystery was created and you ha[ve] to find out what happened. The second kind of novel [i]s one where you read the book simply for the language itself, the way the author use[s] words, the atmosphere and description. The truly great books are the ones that accomplish both."

Ellory very much accomplishes that difficult synthesis. It's flawed, of course; what isn't? But the balance between the dismaying mystery that emerges from a series of violent child murders in small town 1940s Georgia onwards, and a soft, lush lyricism redolent of the southern landscape itself, is both a satisfying one and a successful one. This is a mystery yet it transcends genre conventions. It is a story of serial killings yet it transcends the police procedural. It is character-driven (Vaughn in particular is a compelling and unorthodox protagonist) yet quietly contemplative. It's a haunted tale, more than anything, a branch of southern gothic with a tragic twist.

Finally, I was also extremely impressed with the deft manner in which an English author manages to capture the authentic atmosphere, speech rhythms and culture of the American south, with very few jarring notes ("launderette" for "laundromat" was one of them, alongside the publisher's puzzling decision to use British style single quotes for dialogue in the Kindle version I had).

That aside, this is a novel well worth your time.

Enjoy them both.

Breaking the Rules

As much as we sometimes pretend we don't, we love rules. Even the most maverick of writers is receptive to those clever, memorable guidelines, if only to know what to kick against. And the reality is that rules for writing—as for life, let's face it—are not only abundant but are bewilderingly contradictory.

See, the thing about rules for writing is that, kind of like a yin-yang symbol, they always contain cute little seeds of their exact opposites. Witness the exhortations—from such authoritative guides as Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and George Orwell's Politics and the English Language—to err on the side of simplicity, to avoid in particular the pretensions of Latin- and Greek-based language in favour of good old Anglo-Saxon English (put simply and memorably: "avoid fancy words"). Plain common sense advice about plain common sense English, right? Well, yes and no. Outside the secret and no-doubt sordid fantasies of botanists everywhere, Orwell's example of a snapdragon is still in no danger of being superseded by antirrhinum almost seventy years after he expressed his reservations. Similarly, ameliorate and clandestine have their place, even if we are more often inclined to use help and secret.

The thing is, contained within this particular dictum is a received wisdom that is equally worth challenging: that pretension is somehow wrong or unseemly.

Personally, I'd trust a style guide that said something along these lines: "if your intuition (sorry, "gut" if you love the Anglo-Saxonisms) tells you that what you're currently writing requires some pretension, then don't shy away from it". The music of the Ramones was every bit a product of artifice as anything produced by Van der Graaf Generator. And there may well be moments during your writing (for pacing, for rhythmic or melodic reasons) that require the risk of spouting the dreaded purple prose. In which case, I say go for it. Life is risk. Hell, writing is risk. Let the rules take a back seat once in a while. After all, playing soccer in just the penalty area is called "training"; you use the whole field when you play the actual game. Or, more in keeping with my tortured metaphor, that guitar you coveted and saved for and so proudly brought home in its sleek black case happens to have six strings and twenty frets, so why only noodle around on the top E string and the lower three frets every time? You didn't buy it just to stroke its feminine curves, did you? (Don't answer that.) And I haven't even started on effects pedals…

I'm not saying go all Yngwie Malmsteen here—a sweaty blur, shredding 'til your fingers bleed, hands like demented octopi—but the odd flourish might not go amiss. Of course, you're not Jimi or Jimmy and your attempts will probably fall flat, but what if by reaching, by risking overreaching, you unveil something in your style you weren't aware of, a capacity for lyricism or poetry, a music previously unsung? I'd say that's worth the risk, wouldn't you? Especially since, by baring our souls so publicly, we're already making complete fools out of ourselves anyway.

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A version of this article first appeared on IndiesUnlimited on February 10, 2012.

 

On Board at Indies Unlimited

Uh oh, what have I done? Today, the website Indies Unlimited officially announced that they're finally at the barrel-scraping point and have clearly run out of decent indie authors to ensnare in their evil global-domination schemes. Against all commonsense advice, they went and "recruited" me—if by "recruited" you mean "drove up beside me in a van with blacked-out windows, threw a burlap sack over my head and dragged me to an undisclosed location that smells of cordite and sourmash whiskey".

But on a serious note, one glance at the range of talent and sheer Hollywood charisma of that staff team makes me feel honoured to be accepted among their ranks. I could call them out one by one, but I don't want to embarrass them. Suffice to say they are indeed a great bunch of writers... but more importantly, they give every indication of being great human beings, too. Well, everyone other than that Mader character. You gotta watch that one, he's crafty.

On a day on which the Guardian features an article predicting a correction in the market for e-publishing, it's even more essential to believe that independent writers can make their mark and achieve success on their own merits, so I thank Stephen Hise and the Indies Unlimited crew (motley and worrisomely shady as they are) for this opportunity to prove that quality and community can and will attract enough readers to make this whole experiment viable. Except "experiment" is too cold a word. These are passionate people behind their casual, urbane façades, and as funny and warm as they are once you break the ice (bribes and flattery usually help), they take writing seriously. Seriously enough to abduct people on the street. And threaten them with something that had a lot of little wires attached. Yes, that serious.

Punk Fire or Indie Schmindie?

Inspired by this excellent post by fellow traveller Dan Mader, I've been doing some thinking about what it means to be an indie author in relation to this new publishing milieu within which we find ourselves.

On numerous occasions, Dan and I have discussed the parallels with the punk rock movement of the late 1970s (in the UK and in New York) and beyond (post-punk in the UK, hardcore and straight edge in the United States) leading to "alternative" music in the '90s. And they are indeed striking; with the long tail of minimally talented yet enthusiastically raw artists, the do-it-yourself improvisation, unrealistic expectations and the overall lack of financial success, the slightly dodgy/murky concept of not selling out, of "authenticity", even the sense that the rough-hewn fanzines of old have been replaced by blogs... all of which has contributed to a sense of deja vu for anyone who has been steeped in both cultures particularly.

But here is something else. If you extend the history of punk and conflate it (perhaps somewhat unfairly, although a case can certainly be made) with the musical genre known ominously as "indie", things are perhaps not so cut and dried. Indie as it was once identified, particularly in the UK in the '80s, referred to music that was not signed to a major label, literally to an independent label. And with innovative labels such as Factory, 4AD, and Creation, the music was rich, inventive and became a genuine alternative to the more "mainstream" rock and pop of the day. But something else happened. Soon, the term "indie" was being applied to a style of music and not to the commercial environs of the labels themselves. Mostly rooted in post-punk, it made its way across the Atlantic until, today, indie is a full-fledged genre unto itself... although here lies the problem. It's kind of stale. It's kind of rhythmically-challenged. It's kind of snobby. It's kind of soulless... or precious... or, worse, one-dimensional and gutless. So much so that some have taken to calling it Indie Schmindie to denote a very marginalized, very vanilla, very bland type of prettified ephemera.

So, here's the dilemma. If you even partially agree with my somewhat broad and no-doubt slightly unfair characterizations above, you might begin to worry about how it may all play out for indie authors. We're still at the punk rock stage, in which the initial euphoria and electric uncertainty of everyone being a producer and not merely a consumer is still palpable. A buzzing awareness of possibilities. Some dream of making it big, of being the Clash, if you will. Others just enjoy the sense of belonging while hoping to find the right audience. Now, Dan's post and my own sentiments fall neatly into the latter camp. Making it big is still a lottery. Playing for others, then returning the favour the very next night by showing up and watching those same folks don their metaphorical Strat copies and studded, zippered bondage pants, is the fun part... but where will it end? If it ends all stunted and ghettoized while the same tiny minority make off with pretty much all the pie, we'll have failed, no matter how much fun we may have had for a time. Preaching to the choir, writing only for other writers, however much it can be a blast, may be a good look but is not a sustainable one.

Epublishing should be a great leveller. The problem with that is nothing stays level, not for long. And in some ways, that's okay. A great many bands played to ten or fifteen friends in their garage and were pretty fucking awful, and so let's be honest here: many indie writers can't actually write, which is a pretty big handicap when you come right down to it. But where does that leave those of us with some degree of talent? Can the market sustain a Clash and a Pistols (Konrath, Hocking?) while also maintaining some level of success for the Slits and Wire and Gang of Four and UK Subs, not to mention the tens of thousands of equally worthy yet far lesser-known artists still?

The danger is, we'll be drowned in an oversaturated market in which everyone and his or her dog believes the gravy train is pulling into the station. Okay, excruciating mixed metaphors aside, it's all very well buying into a new and exciting landscape of DIY innovation, but if we descend into a future of mediocrity amid an environment in which the Amazons/Apples of the world simply replace the often exploitive practices of the Big Six publishing houses, and only a tiny handful of artists grow rich, what will we have gained? A sense of fun and cameraderie at the expense of a career. Because, really, why can't good writers plough those talents and that energy into an actual career? Why do they, or we, not deserve that?

None of which is a criticism of those very aspects which inspired this post. Like Dan, I am grateful to be surrounded by such positive and talented people, who often give of themselves for the pure joy of paying it forward and helping their peers. I simply hope that each and every one of them finds some reward over and above the satisfaction of belonging to a community, rich as that can be in and of itself.

I suspect fire in the belly—the fervor of innovation, the ardor of love—will be key ingredients in that goal.

Story Contest

My story immediately below (see previous blog entry) won the most recent Indies Unlimited "Writing Exercise with a Twist" contest. It's a creepy little piece of flash horror fiction based on KS Brooks' enigmatic photograph and the theme of insomnia. We were limited to 250 words, and boy did I discover how strictly we were limited (ironic for a site with that name), and for which I am now very thankful, as it forced me to hone it, whittle away at the verbiage, and discover the shape within. Not a pleasant shape, but a shape all the same.

Each winner of this contest will be published in an ebook at the end of the calendar year, so it is very satisfying and I would like to express my gratitude to Stephen Hise for his apparently unlimited (ha, that word again!) energy and continued support for independent authors.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

Insomnia

This is my story in Indies Unlimited's recent Writing Exercise contest.

It's a little twisted and disquieting, but if you like it, you can vote for it here.

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Photo copyright KS BrooksI don't recall seeing it, but I must have seen it. Something kept me awake half the night, after all. Then some dark urge made me return to it.

Bud Lilly's Trout Shop.

A fishmonger's, you'd think. And for the most part, you'd be right. But you would also be wrong.

Here on this quiet street, post-revelry and pre-dawn, I stood before that window once more. Odd that it should display its neon welcome at this godforsaken hour. And that such cold fluorescence still burned within.

Suddenly afraid, I turned away, wishing for sunrise, for even the spartan brevity of my home; anything but this suspended place masquerading as a city street.

Nonetheless, as if compelled, my gaze returned to the window. In time to see a flash of silver and an appalling face. A hideous sweating man was butchering someone with the efficient strokes of a squalid Samurai, amputating the limbs of his screaming victim. My blood froze. The night butcher propped up the dying man, whose rolling eyes and sagging lips resembled nothing less than a helpless trout… dressing his limbless torso and placing him, bleeding and faintly sobbing, on the shaved ice of the display beside the other staring fish.

The attacker looked up. Implacable, euphoric, he grinned a terrible grin, lifted his awful, dripping blade and pointed at it. Then pointed back at me and winked.

Then I remembered what I had seen earlier: my own name on an empty section of that same display, waiting.

A Titanic Struggle

This will be a short rant, and if you think that's a contradiction in terms, or you're not in the mood for another soapbox oration, then fair play to you, but Imma do it anyway (and if you dislike the word "Imma", please know I feel your pain).

Briefly, and to state the fairly obvious to anyone paying attention to this topic, the sleek luxury liner world of writing and publishing has been impacted and upended by the hidden iceberg of new media and the digital revolution. The Titanic-like so-called Big Six publishing houses broke apart and are still slowly sinking as we speak. After some early and notable successes with epublishing, a gathering tide of new independent authors grabbed onto the flotsam and jetsam and headed for shore. It was and continues to be a dangerous but exhilarating journey.

Now, before its apparent demise, the Titanic was able to blast its horn on a global scale and nobody minded. It had impeccable staff and gatekeepers, directing authors and readers to their appropriate areas and even providing grooming (editing) and advocacy (marketing) services for the former. But now, without them, the individual authors doggie-paddling desperately in the icy waters must resort instead to scrawled messages on pieces of debris: "help me!" "don't let me drown!" "please read this!"

So, here we are. Many of those independent writers desperately trying to reach the shore, some having made it and dried off and been fed hot soup, but most still in the pitiless ocean, continue to need help if they are to survive. And yet, there are those who would deny them their right to call attention to themselves for reasons of what has come to be known as "shameless self-promotion".

Flawed analogies aside, what prompted this little outburst on my part is this idea that when a great number of small people promote their work, much of which is born of pain and sweat and long, dark nights of the soul—you know, work, right?—it is referred to as "spam" or even "gaming the system", yet when the sleek ocean liners of the world do it on a grand, monstrous scale, it's referred to as "advertising". Once again, why does the bulk of the moral opprobrium descend like freezing rain on the tiny, far more desperate swimmers and rarely on the monolithic giants? Because it's easier to pick on them? Safer? Have we really become such cowards?

Anyway, with more and more writers in sight of shore, clutching their makeshift signs and shivering in the dark, I worry about what we will do next—welcome them home or push them back out in the frigid waters?

The New Rapture

Had a dream last night, alone… no, more like a vision, in which it turned out the religious folks who insist on the coming of the Rapture—that moment of self-vindication in which the rest of us sinners all burn and suffer and destroy ourselves here on earth while the righteous are taken into Heaven—have been right all along.

Only, there's this twist, see? As our future dwindles due to overfishing, over logging, the constant rapacious destruction of environment after habitat after ecosystem in order to extract the last few drops of something we either need (water) or want (lumber) or are addicted to (oil), and as the planet deteriorates into a toxic, boiling sea of tribalism and increasing barbarity, partly wrought by self-centred short termism, intolerance of others, wealth disparity and outright bigotry, a newly discovered planet slides silently into our solar system and heads toward earth, a half decade away from up close and impersonal.

The planet, at first noticed only by astronomers who decide to hold off on announcing its disquieting presence off the cold shoulder of poor relegated Pluto, appears perfectly Earthlike, with one key difference: it's a pre-industrial unspoiled earth more akin to a fantasy realm than an actual planet. Tracts of warm, green, forested land surrounded by azure ocean beneath the most tender of climates. It is beautiful.

The delay over the announcement arises from an idea put forth by a handful of NASA scientists and thinkers. If this world is approaching so close to the earth, and in under five years, how feasible would it be to transport a few million humans across the tiny amount of space in order to colonize it? They estimate it would be quite possible, albeit a massive undertaking. And due to its size and slowing velocity, they also calculate it will fall into earth's orbit instead of plunging into the sun.

The catch? Only those who have proven to demonstrate true compassion and love toward their fellow humans—who have mostly refrained from the ugliness of racism or homophobia or any type of fundamentalist creed, religious or political, who are admittedly flawed yet possessed of an appreciation of the only two things that really matter: love and beauty—will be permitted to travel there.

So, the plans are drawn up and over the next handful of years, rumours of this thing are everywhere, at every water-cooler, regularly trending on Twitter, whispered along daylight highways, invading the world's fitful dreams, with many on either side of the divide skeptical of its reality. But as the new "star" appears undeniably brighter in our night skies, even showing ever-less faintly after sunrise and before sundown, the tension increases and more and more skirmishes break out upon the earth. Millions of lives are lost in instantly forgotten border wars, in conflicts over resources, over irrelevant differences, but the moment finally arrives and the hidden silos slide silently open and release their silver seeds filled with the t-shirt-sloganned, the pierced, the dreadlocked, the Doc Martened, the tie-dyed, the sexually liberated, the tattooed, the stoned, the tolerant, the disenfranchised, the gentle, the artists, the wounded healers. Not inheriting but departing the earth.

As their planet descends into a maelstrom of rage and horror, both mirrored and fuelled by the earthquakes and tsunamis and raging conflagrations of a world at last tipped beyond the balance of stability, these new migrant-colonists look back one last time, flinching at the dying screams of the cruel, the selfish, the tyrannical, the faux-populists, the prejudiced, the hate-filled, the control freaks, the authoritarians, the zealots, the abusers, the book-burners, the bullies, those who think it perfectly fine to shoot a wolf from a helicopter, those who would deny equal access to health care to their fellow humans, those who would prevent consenting adults from loving each other, those who wish for an absent daddy to come save them, those who believe winning is more important than the joy of playing, those who add and have added nothing to the world… before turning their gaze toward the heavens, toward their new home looming ahead, a new hopeful world the secret planners had already secretly named… this world and this exodus both, named Enrapture.

Review of "Making a Name"

I reviewed Rosanne Dingli's over at Amazon. I'll let it stand.

We are so spoiled these days, by the garish and the obvious. Subtlety and nuance seem to have been relegated to the quieter corners of the world. In "Making a Name and other stories", Australian author Rosanne Dingli seems to be on a one-woman mission to bring those qualities back into the mainstream.

These nine short stories are rich in the finer aspects of human interaction. It is a book filled with gestures. Glances, tilted heads, quiet movements tell deeper stories than many writers manage to convey in far showier works. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate homicidal savagery and alien invasions as much as the next fan of genre fiction, but who wants a meal of only protein? Green vegetables are good for you, after all. But I also don't want to appear to damn with faint praise, or compare Ms Dingli's stories to brussels sprouts. No, these are finely tuned and exquisitely textured snapshots of the human condition in all its regrettable, messy glory. And there is even a hint of unease that sometimes emerges more fully at the end, a haunted echo of something barely touched upon in the body of the story itself. I am being careful not to leave spoilers here, not that these stories particularly hinge on shocking revelations; even the twists are subtle.

One story in particular continued to resonate for me long afterward. In "Woman Peeling An Apple", the complexity of human relationships is at its most intense; all the loneliness, desperation, tender envy and regret of sexual longing are present in this beautifully crafted account of painters, photographers, friendships, and family ties. Its European setting (France, Belgium) enhances its paradoxically gentle power, and it won't let go.

If I were to offer one slight criticism, and not a particularly serious one, the writing is perhaps *too* mannered sometimes. Everyone "makes love"... and maybe this is my own capitulation to the sensational, but I found myself wishing they would get a little raunchier, a little earthier, now and then. But like I said, that is but a minor quibble; the vast majority of this work is a delight--in its memorable phrases, in its clear love of and dexterity with the language itself.

This is the territory of Virginia Woolf, or possibly Milan Kundera. Now *that* is certainly not faint praise.